BECmNINGS OF ENGLISH COLONIZATION 55 



The inner limits were described by a line of longitude drawn 

 north from Cape St. Mary, and by a line of latitude drawn 

 west from Cape Bonavista. Everything to the east and south 

 of these lines belonged to the Company. The east coast 

 of Placentia Bay and the south coast of Bonavista Bay were 

 included in the inner limits, and formed an integral part of 

 the essential colony. In a larger and vaguer sense the lAe outer 

 colony was defined as co-extensive with *all those countries, ^^,^JJf "^ 

 lands, and ilands commonly called Newfound land ', and lying French, in 

 between 46° N. lat. and 52° N. lat. The southern outer limit ^ '^"^^' 

 was De Mons's northern territorial limit ; the northern outer 

 limit trenched on Labrador, and the two outer limits included 

 both sides of Belle Isle Strait on the north, and both sides of 

 Cabot Strait on the south, so that the colonists might, if they 

 could, close the two main ways into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

 In that sense the patent was anti-French; in other respects 

 it was purely peaceful in character. The patentees were also 

 given mining rights on ungranted parts of the adjacent main- 

 land. The kernel of the colony was a little larger than the 

 peninsula of Avalon, and its husk was a little larger than the 

 island of Newfoundland. Fishing rights and rights incidental and the 

 thereto, whether of Englishmen or foreigners, were not to be ^^^^'^^^^^_ 

 affected by the new patent; and sea and shore were still \o ject to fish- 

 be free to fishers of every race. The reservation boih of sea ^^^S'^^g^^^- 

 and shore expressed what Grotius in his Mare Liberuin 

 (1609) laid down as a rule of international law — that free 

 sea-fishing was a natural right, and that fishing was not free, 

 if fishers might not land and dry their nets, and build and 

 occupy temporary buildings on the shore.^ Grotius's rule 

 has long ago been qualified by the rule, which makes the sea 

 within three miles of the shore the exclusive property of the 

 nation which owns the shore. But perhaps the authors of 

 the patent thought less of Grotius's obsolete law than of the 

 many thousand Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English 



^ Grotius, Mare Liberum, 1609, P« 22. 



